Tips for Webmasters

Use class with semantics in mind.

Often people use class names like bluetext, or
redborder. A much better way to name your classes is with
the role a certain HTML element of that class has.

Good names don't change

Think about why you want something to look a certain way,
and not really about how it should look. Looks can always
change, but the reasons for giving something a look stay the same.

Good names

warning, important,
downloadableImage and submenu
are all good names. They describe what a certain element
represents, and they are not likely to change. A warning will
always remain a warning, no matter how much the look of the page
changes.

Bad names

border4px, lighttext and
prettybackground are examples of bad names. You might
fatten that border to a whopping 5 pixels, or the background may
look pretty old after a while, and not pretty at all. An advantage
of using CSS is that you won't have to change much in order to
change the looks of your website. If you have to change all light
text into dark text, and thus change all classes
lighttext to darktext in all
your HTML pages, you're likely to miss a few.

Further Reading

About the "QA Tips"

The W3C QA Tips are short documents explaining useful
bits of knowledge for Web developers or designers, hosted and produced by the Quality Assurance
Interest Group at W3C.

While the tips are carefully reviewed by the participants of the group, they should not be seen
as anything else than informative bits of wisdom, and especially, they are not
normative W3C technical specifications.

Learn more about the Tips, how to submit your own pearls of wisdom, and find all the other QA
tips in the Tips Index.